Magpie Nest

There is more of chattering than usual in the garden this month. The magpies are active and busy building a nest. There is a tree near the top end of the garden where one of the upper branches has a triple fork and this is where the magpies are building a nest.
It is quite a complex affair with their main nest made of twigs in the cruck of the branches and a canopy built over the nest to provide some protection from the weather and nest raiding birds. No doubt it will be lined with moss and down before the eggs are laid, but at present the nest is clearly visible before the leaves start to grow on the trees. It is a big nest as can be seen from the magpie standing on the canopy. It took ages to get a picture of a bird in residence.

Later today I cleared out my camera bag. I tend to pop bits and pieces in the side pockets meaning to put them away later, and never do.
I found a small group of bone and stone tools in one pocket of the bag. This consisted of a needle and harpoon point of Mesolithic style, three arrowheads and an end scraper. The end scraper is a neolithic artifact, but the other tools are ones that I have made over the years. One leaf shaped arrowhead is made from the glass of the bottom of an old broken milk bottle. I must have made that in 1992 for a class I gave on prehistoric tool making, which looked at modern stone tool makers like the Australian Aboriginals and the Kalahari Bushmen. Goodness knows how long they have been in my camera bag.